Lee Anderson’s failure to apologise for grotesque remarks about Sadiq Khan, and subsequent insistence that he was right, have isolated him. Rightly, the Conservative whip was withdrawn after he claimed that Islamists had “got control” of the mayor of London. But while he is the locus of the current row over Islamophobia in Tory ranks, he is hardly unique. Rishi Sunak’s belated response, the leadership’s unwillingness to acknowledge his comments not just as prejudiced but as racist or Islamophobic, and the lack of reaction to the inflammatory words of colleagues, all speak to a broader problem and a failure to tackle it.
Mr Anderson was responding to an article by Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, stating that “the Islamists, the extremists and the anti-Semites are in charge now”. The prime minister and others say that the Ashfield MP was wrong to name an individual.
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